The Cat
by minerva86
Summary: Petunia begins to wonder if the life she has chosen is the one she would really like to be living. The beginnings of a PDMM femmeslash.
1. Chapter 1

Petunia crept stealthily across the lounge room past the snoring Vernon. She pulled back the curtain slowly and just enough to see the tortoise-shell cat perched on the front fence. It might have been looking straight at her, she pulled the curtain closed and stood up quickly.

The sudden movement roused Vernon who let out a loud snort. Petunia took three large, gliding steps back to her seat, taking up her crossword. Vernon opened his eyes and licked his lips dozily.

"Ah, I think it's time I turned in" he made a loud grunt as he got unceremoniously out of his armchair. Petunia smiled and nodded vaguely, still pretending to be completely engrossed in the paper, but he shuffled towards the door not noticing anyway. At the foot of the stairs he called, "Petunia?"

"Yes, yes, coming, dear. Just as soon as I finish tidying up down here, I'll be right up." Petunia made more noise than was necessary collecting the cups and saucers as Vernon struggled up the staircase to bed.

She rinsed the cups quickly and turned off the lights in the lounge before returning to the window once more. The cat seemed not to have moved and inch. There was no question that its presence was something to do with Harry – it was clear that the cat knew more than a cat should know. But as soon as she began to get flustered at the thought of magic being somehow involved, she was again gripped by the steady and, she had to admit, comforting presence of the animal.

It was certainly an appealing looking cat. Petunia might have said "handsome" if she didn't have the feeling the cat was female. Studying it she settled on "elegant" in her mind. The streetlights of Privet Drive fell on her back in such a way as to make her fur look like rippling water, shining almost blue under moonlight. Her eyes sparkled silver and she sat so very still, with her tail curled neatly around her paws.

"Petunia?!"

"AH!...Vernon!...Oh!.." she continued breathlessly and walked toward his great round outline in the semi-darkness, "you scared me half to death!"

"What were you looking at out there?" Vernon asked suspiciously as she tried to usher him out of the room.

"Nothing, nothing…" she searched desperately for an appropriate excuse, "well, just thought I might catch Mrs. Ferguson letting her dog out on everyone's lawns again." Vernon grumbled indistinctly, but she knew she was safe as she followed him up the stairs.

Laying in bed that night, Vernon snoring loudly beside her, petunia looked up at the light from the window where it hit the roof and thought about the cat. She fell asleep thinking of its piercing eyes…and how its fur would feel on her skin.


	2. Chapter 2

It was four nights later that Vernon also discovered the cat.

Petunia sat primly on her usual seat watching a program about home decorating on the television. Vernon, bored with the show began sorting important documents in his briefcase for a meeting he had the next day. Amongst the stapling and shuffling were his usual grunts and sighs. Petunia was too engrossed in the presenter's ideas on flower-arranging to take her usual line of thought on his disgusting noises which was _if only he would lose some weight_. Nor did she notice him get out of his chair and trundle in his ungainly fashion out of the room.

She may not have heard him leave but she certainly jumped at the slamming of the front door as he returned.

"PETUNIA!" he roared. She appeared at the lounge room door, her eyes wide with confusion. But the moment she saw his mouth unusually rounded and his face glowing red her stomach began to do slight somersaults.

She remembered the cat.

"What is it Vernon?" he employed the use of some of his most colourful language to communicate his knowledge of the cat. Petunia asked, possibly too softly, "What did you do to it?"

"Well I shooed it away, of course!" he replied, calming somewhat. "but no doubt the bloody this is something to do with Potter because it wouldn't budge," he lowered his voice, conspiratorially and a grin spread across his sweaty face "so I gave it a good kicking!"

Petunia felt sick.

Vernon was apparently fully recovered because he walked into the lounge chortling merrily. She followed him slowly, resisting the desire to go outside and find the animal, to make sure it was alright, perhaps even to pick it up and press its warm fur to her face…she shook her head quickly. She couldn't explain the sadness she felt and while she despised the probability of the magical connection, she had also grown curiously appreciative because, for some reason, she felt that the cat was there to protect them all, not just Harry.


	3. Chapter 3

While Vernon continued to happily arrange his papers, Petunia now feigned absorption in the television the presenter concluded her spiel on flowers and began discussing the sad lack of doilies in today's decorative fashions, while her mind wandered through her early experiences with the magical world.

Perhaps, she mused, her attitude to her sister and "her kind" might have been different had that Severus Snape not been her first impression.

She suddenly felt very tired. A lifetime of concentrated hatred had exausted her and not only that, it had stolen the last years of her relationship with Lily. They had been so close as girls. Outwardly Petunia had always blamed magic for coming between them, but a heavy guilt had weighed on her in the years since Lily's death. There was no denying that Petunia's own prejudice and, yes, her jealousy had been the wedge that drove them apart. She certainly had no one to blame but herself for the fact that she had never known her sister as a young woman and mother.

Petunia was roused from her thoughts by the warm trickle of a single tear trailing down her cheek. She wiped it away quickly and glanced nervously in Vernon's direction. He had finished his paperwork and was already dozing in his chair.

"Vernon," he snorted loudly and opened his eyes, "you should go to bed, you have a big day tomorrow."

"Mmm, indeed," a slight curl of disgust formed at the edge of petunia's mouth as Vernon attempted to heave himself out of the chair, gravity rallying against his great bulk. "Are you coming too?" She caught herself and smiled quickly.

"Not just yet, I'm not very tired and I want to finish watching this program," she nodded towards the television but noticed that what she had been watching had been replaces with what appeared to be a war documentary. She looked quickly back at Vernon, hoping he wouldn't notice. He was however already lumbering out of the room.

"Suit yourself. But I'll need a good breakfast in the morning."

"Of course, dear, of course," she called out as she heard his footfall on the first step and listened intently, waiting for him to reach the landing. She estimated him to be about half way up when stoped and began descending. She fumbled quickly with the television remote trying desperately to find something suitably 'interesting'. He came back into the lounge and the best she had managed had been ads.

"Forget something, dear?" she asked innocently.

"Just checking," he said making his way gruffly to the window. Petunia's heart beat a little faster as Vernon indiscreetly pulled back the curtain and stuck his face up to the window.

He began to chuckle victoriously, replacing the curtain. Petunia did her best to make a suitably congratulatory face as he turned to her.

"I don't expect we'll be seeing any ore cats on our fence!" He continued to chuckle to himself all the way up the stairs.

Petunia's heart sank. Perhaps the cat really wouldn't return. She wondered what it meant if it didn't, would they no longer be safe from whatever it was guarding them against? And what of her fondness for the cat? She was certain it was aware of her intrigue, but could it sense her despair at the possibility of its permanent departure?

She stood up, a little shakily and went to the window. She pulled back the curtain with a tentative hand. The cat was nowhere to be seen. She stared hopelessly at the place where it had perched all those nights feeling a loss she could not begin to explain.

Petunia slumped onto the arm of the chair next to the window and looked down at her hands. Her wedding band glittered strangely through her teary eyes. She scowled at the attention seeking ring and what it represented of her life. Vernon was a bastard and he would never understand. Though, to be fair, Petunia hardly understood herself. What _had_ happened to her these past few weeks? All the emotions surrounding her sister, her childhood and magic, once so easily repressed had suddenly escaped. Now they were all wrapped up in this cat.

But, like all those things, the cat was gone.


	4. Chapter 4

Petunia's eyes prickled and she blinked them quickly, but in doing so set free a single tear. It trailed the curve of her cheekbone as if bravely carving the way for a veritable flood of emotion. And flood they did. She didn't care. She become quite furious at the kind of life she had created for herself, she'd been waiting for happiness for so long, thinking it lay somewhere deep in political correctness. _Foolish_.

For a moment Vernon's stern face appeared in her mind. Was she going crazy perhaps? Mid-life crisis? Even in her current state, she shuddered at the latter thought.

But a picture of Lily with James replaced Vernon's face as quickly as it had come. The pair were smiling and laughing…like a movie on paper. It was a magic picture that Lily had sent her, taken after her graduation.

Still more tears fell as she recalled Vernon's frantic movements the day he found her sitting on their bed staring at the photograph. It was the same day they found Harry on their doorstep.

"None of this nonsense anymore!" he had boomed as he threw the picture on the fire along with the letter from Dumbledore saying that her sister…her _only sister_ was gone.

After that, Petunia realised, her own anger and jealousy had fed hungrily off Vernon's blind hatred. It was, she now understood, her way of coping with the loss of Lily. A sister she would never have the chance to embrace, to tell she loved unconditionally. Because, Petunia realised at last, she really did.

She was sobbing into her hands now, shoulders heaving while years of pent-up devastation cascaded from her. She let the tears come because she didn't think she would have the energy to stop them anyway.

Finally her anguish subsided long enough for her to dry her eyes on the sleeve of her dressing gown. She sighed deeply but unsteadily, resigning herself to the fact that in the end, her husband and her child were still asleep upstairs…and Harry of course. She would get up in the morning to make their breakfast because, while this wasn't the life she wanted anymore, it was the one she had signed on for. She had to go to bed.

She stood up and began her usual routine; she collected cups, shook cushions, wiped benches and re-stacked coasters. By the time she had finished and switched off the lights, her eyes were completely dry, if a little sore and her mind had settled almost completely back into domestic oblivion.

She was standing in the doorway to the hall, just about to go upstairs when the thought of lying next to the great sweaty, noisy lump that was Vernon reminded her of the cat. She had almost forgotten it. She crossed the room and stuck her head out of the window with more indifference than she felt in her heart.

Nothing.

She sighed. What had she expected? She was turning away when out of the corner of her eye she caught a flash of silver…

Her stomach dipped at the sight of the cat, stalking casually but confidently along the fence to its usual post. Petunia watched unbreathing while it turned twice and then settled grandly, tail twitching slightly before it curled around its paws.

Petunia slowly let out the breath she had been holding in. the cat looked up…and _at_ her. Petunia's eyes widened and their gaze locked. She might have happily stayed always by that window, caught in the strong, sturdy look of the cat's deep silvery eyes had her hypnosis not been broken by a wink from the cat. Petunia blinked.

As she was arguing with herself internally about whether or not the cat had _actually_ blinked, it stood up, stretched, jumped gracefully off the post and began walking down the front path towards her font door. Petunia lost sight of it just before it got to the door mat thanks to some rather healthy rose bushes outside the window she was perched at. She blinked again, surveying the front yard and street. Everything seemed as it should. After a minute or two she could almost believe that she had imagined the cat. She closed the curtain and sat down in Vernon's chair to gather her thoughts.

It had been but an idea for so long – to let the cat inside. Now that it was seemingly about to happen, Petunia began to observe the possibly consequences. Vernon would go through the roof of course. But then, aside from the sound of her own breathing all she could hear were his violent snores from above her. And after all, this was her house too, she could, if she so desired, let in a stray cat.

After a moment she decided that while it might seem ridiculous for her to open the door, she simply could not go to bed wondering what might have happened if she had.

Petunia was running on instinct now, her mind some seconds slower than her body - she was walking towards the lounge room door before she realised what she was doing and was aware of nothing but the paleness of the skin on her hand and the chill that was tracing the length of her spine. She opened the door slowly, her eyes trained on the spot where the cat would be sitting…waiting for her.


End file.
